From Indian Millenarianism to a Tropical Witches' Sabbath: Brazilian Sanctities in Jesuit Writings and Inquisitorial Sources1

This article analyses 'Santidade', the most important Indian millenarian movement to occur in colonial Brazil. Santidade erupted during the 1580's in the Jaguaripe area in the captaincy of Bahia. Santidade's greatest peculiarity, besides the blending of Catholic and indigenous beliefs and rites, was the fact that a slave plantation owner decided to protect it, promising to defend the Indians'"religious freedom" on his land and attracting them to his Jaguaripe sugar mill. The leader of the Santidade movement, an Indian baptised as Antonio, proclaimed himself to be the ancestral indigenous deity Tamandaré. After luring the leader of Santidade into a trap set by the Jaguaripe sugar mill owner, the movement was destroyed in 1585.